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The government is changing the rules to make it harder for disabled people to appeal when it takes away their benefits.

And they are clamping down on job centre staff who try to help claimants, in an effort to break an “appeals culture”, according to internal memos seen by Socialist Worker.

People claiming Employment Support Allowance (ESA) can be stripped of it if they are deemed “fit for work” in controversial tests run by companies such as Atos Healthcare, known as Work Capability Assessments (WCA).

WCAs have come in for massive criticism from doctors as well as disability campaigners, and almost 40 percent of people who appeal against a WCA decision are successful.

The high appeal rate has been a huge embarrassment for the government—as it exposes how arbitrary and unfair their assessments are.

But instead of changing the system the government is making it harder to appeal against it.